Uinta Brewing Company Lime Pilsner Awareness Campaign

50%

Video Ad View Rate

1.7M

Total Impressions

78%

More Targeted Audience

The Challenge

Founded in 1993 in an old mechanic’s garage in Salt Lake City, Utah, Uinta Brewing company has grown to be the 38th largest craft brewer in the nation. Uinta’s 16 year-round beers are distributed throughout 35 states, along with nine seasonal beers and multiple small-batch releases.

After launching the Lime Pilsner in April 2017, Uinta Brewing Company sought to leverage social media and the peak beer sales season of June, July, and August to promote this new summer variety to both established Uinta followers and new audiences. To do this, Uinta partnered with emfluence to run a visually focused social media campaign to the “dual consumer” audience, which is defined in the craft brewing market as people who drink both craft and domestic varieties.

Because Lime Pilsner was a summer varietal, Uinta was also interested in using the peak beer sales season to further define where the Lime Pilsner would stand out against established summer varietals, including established domestic varieties like Bud Light Lime, all varieties of Mexican brands and light pilsners, and craft varieties of radlers and shandys. So while the primary target audience sought to attract the “dual consumer,” Uinta hoped to use the campaign to better define an exact audience for the Lime Pilsner they could use for future campaigns.

The Solution

The primary goal for the Lime Pilsner campaign was to introduce the new pilsner to an audience that had already expressed interest in similar types or styles of beer on social media. By taking advantage of peak beer sales season and the beginning of summer holidays with the campaign launch the Friday before Memorial Day, Uinta hoped to use the seasonal timing to generate the maximum amount of brand awareness for the Lime Pilsner, and the primary KPI goal given to emfluence was to generate the most number of impressions possible within the general “dual consumer” audience. With each week, the campaign would be narrowed to a more targeted audience, based on the previous week’s interaction with the ads.

The tactic to reach this goal was to run paid social media ads targeted at interests on Facebook and Instagram. Multiple versions of the visual ads, including videos, user generated images, and brand images, were placed on both Facebook and Instagram to allow for audience and creative optimizations within ad spend. The ads ran only on Fridays (when weekend alcohol purchases are made) for six weeks during the high beer sale period. Creative featured user generated content and content from influencers, which ties back to brand messaging: “It's boring to explore alone. Adventure is best experienced with close friends by your side.”

Week one started with the widest audience segment (25,000,000 potential) to gain insight on demographics with targeting adjustments made each week to narrow down to a strong social media audience for the Lime Pilsner beer, thus helping Uinta understand which targeting options would work best for future Lime Pilsner campaigns.

By the end of the six-week campaign, emfluence was able to translate the 25,000,000 potential audience into a more targeted 5,500,00 potential audience based on actual engagement with the Lime Pilsner ads running. By cutting down 78% of non-relevant targets, emfluence delivered Uinta a Lime Pilsner audience group that could be targeted more efficiently and with better engagement for future marketing campaigns, both on and off social media.

Running for six weeks with ads limited to Instagram and Facebook on just Fridays, the Lime Pilsner campaign saw:
1,281,193 unique reach between Facebook and Instagram combined (1,207,258 on Facebook, 73,935 on Instagram)
1,726,044 impressions between Facebook and Instagram combined (1,643,510 on Facebook, 82,534 on Instagram)
50% video ad view rate, with more than 21,000 views on Instagram
5,032 click throughs to the Where to Buy page on the Uinta website (http://www.uintabrewing.com/where-to-buy?product=lime-pilsner).

Almost as important as the total impressions reached was the newly created Lime Pilsner target audience, which would allow for better targeting in the future and more efficient ad spend.